Y8 - Flash games are not displaying

[KeithJammer]

I have found what I believe to be a bug when it comes to displaying games on Y8, I'm aware there has been a regression couple weeks ago regarding NPAPI plugins, but now it seems to have been fixed, and have confirmed that flash does work on most sites just like how it has used to. However, something has changed regarding Y8, where now the games aren't displaying at all anymore, and it's like the window isn't being expanded properly, as if there is simply nothing there, no .swf, nothing.

Y8's normal behavior seems to be, that first it tries loading the .swf to see if the browser is flash enabled in case the user is using their proprietary Y8 browser which comes bundled with flash which it does with an user agent check as well, if it fails to activate flash, like it would in most modern browsers, then it starts loading Ruffle and prompts the user to click on a big play button to start Ruffle emulating the game. In Pale Moon as of 33.8.2 which is the latest current stable version, nothing appears whatsoever, Ruffle doesn't try loading in either, so it leads me to believe that there must be a bug in how Pale Moon is rendering Y8, because if there were an issue with flash, then no other sites with flash would work either, and I have tested as well with a local .swf file to see if Pale Moon loads it properly, and it does, so I'm not sure if it's flash that's the problem.

I likewise tried changing the useragent of Pale Moon to the same one that Y8 Browser uses in thoughts that perhaps Y8 only serves the actual .swf if they detect you using their browser, but that's not true either, because in Chrome, I can for a brief second see a gray screen from Chrome which reads that flash is no longer supported, so it indeed tries to load the .swf at first regardless of user agent, but it was worth trying anyway.

Please always mention the name/domain of the website in question in your topic title.

I have attached a screenshot as well which I hope it's going to display right as I haven't used forums in a long time:
In the screenshot you can tell that the game is missing, and nothing at all is being loaded where the game is supposed to be, the little area where the game is, is completely collapsed as if an element is missing entirely or not being loaded.

I only have 2 extensions enabled, that being uBlock Origin 1.16.4.30, the legacy version for firefox, and User Agent Status 1.7.2. To test, I have already disabled both extensions and can confirm it is not working without them either.
To note also, is that I'm using the portable version of Pale Moon and have done so for years and never had any issues regarding flash besides performance being a little slow, but I've gotten used to that.

Code: Select all

showCMP module loaded  
6126-df2295d6583a2159232e.js:2:2818
prepareShowCmp() called  
6126-df2295d6583a2159232e.js:2:4029
 → using original stub to produce a promise  
6126-df2295d6583a2159232e.js:2:4122
 → creating CMP promise  
6126-df2295d6583a2159232e.js:2:4211
 → hooking real promise to stub resolver  
6126-df2295d6583a2159232e.js:2:4290
HTTP load failed with status 404. Load of media resource https://www.y8.com/cloud/y8-rollover/videos/8730/08646036b8521bc6fa6a0662f77f973d46768629.mp4?1458985737 failed. 
n_game
PreRollAdsManager NOT active  
5460-56c239aa17967a00b3c5.js:1:13510
dispatching event preRollAdHidden  
5460-56c239aa17967a00b3c5.js:1:13811
jQuery.Deferred exception: assignment to undeclared variable event value@https://img.y8.com/packs/js/5460-56c239aa17967a00b3c5.js:1:13858
value@https://img.y8.com/packs/js/5460-56c239aa17967a00b3c5.js:1:13551
value@https://img.y8.com/packs/js/controllers/items/show-d1d10c6e6d3bc8346e61.js:1:21701
[2669]/<@https://img.y8.com/packs/js/controllers/items/show-d1d10c6e6d3bc8346e61.js:1:22714
e@https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.7.1/jquery.min.js:2:27028
l/</t<@https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.7.1/jquery.min.js:2:27330
 undefined  
jquery.min.js:2:28648
showCMP resolved: country =   
6126-df2295d6583a2159232e.js:2:3696
CMP-logic: Preparing timeout and loading tcfapi  
n_game:352:15
HTTP load failed with status 404. Load of media resource https://www.y8.com/cloud/y8-rollover/videos/8730/9c517f5dd39168d92176aaf2d7ecf429d7362da3.webm?1458985737 failed.  
n_game
Specified “type” attribute of “video/ogv” is not supported. Load of media resource /cloud/y8-rollover/videos/8730/1cff2d745bc6d67cb1e05d121f31ed164e41e7e3.ogv?1458985737 failed.  
n_game
All candidate resources failed to load. Media load paused.  
n_game
HTTP load failed with status 404. Load of media resource https://www.y8.com/cloud/y8-rollover/videos/8730/9c517f5dd39168d92176aaf2d7ecf429d7362da3.webm?1458985737 failed.  
n_game
Specified “type” attribute of “video/ogv” is not supported. Load of media resource /cloud/y8-rollover/videos/8730/1cff2d745bc6d67cb1e05d121f31ed164e41e7e3.ogv?1458985737 failed.  
n_game
All candidate resources failed to load. Media load paused.  
n_game
ReferenceError: assignment to undeclared variable event[Learn More]  
5460-56c239aa17967a00b3c5.js:1:13858
Messaging without detection successfully executed.  
wrapperMessagingWithoutDetection.js:1:130854
[event] onSPReady Arguments { 0: undefined, 2 more… }  
n_game:197:19
CMP-logic: Loading non personalized ads  
n_game:323:15
[event] onMessageReceiveData Arguments { 0: "gdpr", 1: Object, 2 more… }  
n_game:194:19
[event] onMessageReceiveData Arguments { 0: "usnat", 1: Object, 2 more… }  
n_game:194:19
interaction complete  
wrapperMessagingWithoutDetection.js:1:130779
RangeError: invalid value shortOffset for option timeZoneName  
4465-cb83e55d6d3b2c608986.chunk.js:1:197
RangeError: invalid value shortOffset for option timeZoneName

[UCyborg]

They don't seem to serve Flash content through static HTMl, which may have been the case before. Not sure, I didn't check HTML with JavaScript off when it worked, but as it is, Flash file and related HTML markup is just nowhere to be found.

"Everything must be JavaScript." ?

I needed to block Ruffle even before recent breakage, see here.

[Moonchild]

"Everything must be JavaScript." ?

Unfortunately that is the trend currently.

(I don't have time to analyze the site at the moment; I'll leave that to others)

[adoxa]

Here's a Modify HTTP Response filter which:

• pretends its y8 (rather than having to use a custom agent);
• declares event (rather than enabling the config setting);
• removes unsupported timeZoneName: shortOffset (just uses short instead).

You will also need the userstyle mentioned in the other topic.

Code: Select all

[["img.y8.com",["/chunk\\.js$/",["shortOffset","short","/indexOf\\(\"y8\"\\)/g","indexOf(\"\")"]],["/[0-9a-f]\\.js$/",["/,(event=.*?),/",";var $1;","/indexOf\\(\"y8\"\\)/g","indexOf(\"\")"]],["/\\.js$/",["/indexOf\\(\"y8\"\\)/g","indexOf(\"\")"]]]]

[UCyborg]

• declares event (rather than enabling the config setting);

Oh, so that's why it broke, I recently turned dom.window.event.enabled off as I thought only my mobile phone service provider site (moj.bob.si) wanted it (not anymore).

BTW, your CSS is not exactly equivalent to what original does, it cuts off some vertical portion of the player (didn't notice that before). I'm not good at figuring these things out, I just set height to calc((69vw) * 5/8) because that looks OK on my screen...

[KeithJammer]

Thank you! That 'Modify HTTP response' snippet helped a lot, flash is working on Y8 again indeed, but there are scaling issues. I used the user styles adoxa made, but they either make the game display too much, or become cropped, otherwise it works great.

1st user style snippet:
https://i.imgur.com/GUaz0oA.png

2nd user style snippet:
https://i.imgur.com/F8IVNEN.png

I can't figure out how to resize the images with BBcode, and adding them as is would clog the page too much, sorry for adding the image links like this, hope it's okay.

I have checked that browser zoom is already set to 100% by pressing CTRL + 0, also, without the user style, it looks just like in the 1st image anyway. Using the 2nd user style seems to enlarge games too much that if not maximized, will make them look cropped, if i maximize the window, it will enlarge the game too much and look like the first image where you can see outside the game's boundaries.

[adoxa]

The first one is how it's supposed to look (at least, that's how it looks in FF).

[KeithJammer]

I can confirm via other games that they almost all look the same, with a bunch of off-screen assets that are clearly not meant to be seen and kept there just in the buffer, it's the same if you were to load a .swf in a standalone flash projector and then stretch the window. So it's most definitely not natural, try it out with Stealth Hunter 2, you'll immediately see that the title screen doesn't fit right, and with N, the ninja game, the blocks have white gaps in-between them because the game isn't being scaled properly. I eventually used this snippet instead for the user styling "calc((69vw) * 5/8)" and switched the "69" to "80" and it looks better, but only in windowed, the moment i maximize or stretch the window, it's going to immediately break and you can see past the game's boundaries again, so it's not a definitive fix.

For comparison's sake so you can see how the game is supposed to look normally, try loading Crush the Castle 2 on newgrounds, make sure to set in your newgrounds account to load the original flash files always so it doesn't use ruffle as long as you're logged in, and you will immediately see that the game is being scaled properly with no out-of-bounds assets being shown.

[UCyborg]

adoxa's first CSS:



Firefox with Ruffle:



Maybe Ruffle applies some scaling inside the container, while for Flash, container itself should be scaled properly?

[adoxa]

Huh, turns out the userstyle is not needed, after all. Here's another filter to add a direct link to the SWF.

Code: Select all

,["www.y8.com",["/games/",["/embed src=('.*')[\\s\\S]*?<a target/","$&=\"_blank\" href=$1>SWF</a><a target"]]]]

Delete the last ] of the current filter, then copy the above.

[KeithJammer]

That works too, thank you. Though it would've been nice if it was possible to play games just like before rather than having to open the .swf directly, but this is still useful nevertheless. Would it be possible to somehow scale the games more properly directly in the y8 game page?

[UCyborg]

I came up with this script to fix the aspect ratio (install GreaseMonkey for Pale Moon if you don't have it yet):

Code: Select all

// ==UserScript==
// @name        Y8 aspect ratio fix
// @namespace   https://github.com/UCyborg
// @version     1.0
// @author      UCyborg
// @match       https://www.y8.com/games/*
// @grant       none
// ==/UserScript==

'use strict';

setTimeout(() => {
  var el = document.getElementById('item-direct-container');
  if (el) {
    el.style = 'position: absolute;';
    el.parentElement.style = 'padding-bottom: 70%;';
  }
}, 250);

[KeithJammer]

It does seem to help a little bit, but a lot of games still have cropping/buffer area issues. I can rectify it a bit by minimizing zoom for some games like N where after the Y8 update, the game when resized improperly leaves a lot of gaps in the level geometry, and in others like Crush the Castle 2, during gameplay you can see outside of the game's boundaries. From the way i see it, i don't think it's possible to fix this without making a very extensive userscript that also scales the border around the game from Y8 itself to conform the game, or else it'll keep being scaled forcibly by the site and look awful. Here's how Crush the castle 2 looks in gameplay with your userscript:

However, i noticed something that might come in useful for those that know how to make scripts and such, there's a class in the HTML bit where the game container lies called class="item-direct-container resizable"
If you remove this class, the game immediately returns to its native resolution, completely unscaled and might even look small in some instances, but this makes every game look much more correct, but i don't know where personally to go from here, but thought it was worth pointing out. The entire snippet is as such:

Code: Select all

<embed src="https://img.y8.com/cloud/y8-flash-game/contents/item_versions/flash_games/15998/original/crush_the_castle_2.swf?1521347300" class="item-direct-container resizable" id="gamefileEmbed" name="flash-content" wmode="window" allowfullscreen="false" allowfullscreeninteractive="false" fullscreenaspectratio="" quality="high" play="true" loop="true" menu="" allowscriptaccess="never" haspriority="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="https://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" align="middle" width="800" height="500">

[adoxa]

Here's an update to the filter to remove that class - insert this after the last " in the previous filter.

Code: Select all

,"/class='item-direct-container resizable'/g",""

For CtC2 I still see a little extra top and bottom, didn't look at anything else.

[UCyborg]

Going by standalone Flash Player, Crush the Castle 2's size is supposed to be 800x550, it doesn't get set so on this web site even before any scaling takes place. The scaling produces visual issues on other browsers with Ruffle as well, that CSS I posted just workarounds the browser's lack of support for aspect-ratio CSS property, I guess it's the closest you can get to how it would look with working aspect-ratio property.

[adoxa]

Updated filter (complete) to set the apparent proper height (at least for N).

Code: Select all

[["www.y8.com",["/games/",["/embed src=('.*')[\\s\\S]*?<a target/","$&=\"_blank\" href=$1>SWF</a><a target","/class='item-direct-container resizable'/g","","/; aspect-ratio: .*?/(.*?);/","; height: $1px;"]]]]

And a userstyle that overrides the supplied height (500) for CtC2.

Code: Select all

@-moz-document domain("www.y8.com") {
  div[data-slug="crush_the_castle_2"] > div {
    height: 550px !important;
  }
}

[KeithJammer]

That looks much more correct for just about every game, as a result, the games are all kind of small now, but it's understandable seeing these games were meant to be played on smaller resolutions back then, in a standalone projector, it's usually nicer to resize the window by hand until the game looks okay without stretching it, but in browser, I would imagine, it was up to the site to scale the games properly, and Y8 doesn't really seem to attempt that at all. Crush the castle 2 still has some overscan stuff, but the more I look into it, the .swf y8 has is just like that, most games are fine, browser zoom enlarges them enough to make them more easier on the eyes. I overall prefer the user style more as it enlarges the games a bit while also not messing them up too much (usually). Thank you, it's much better than not having these games at all in Pale Moon